By your logic, there would be no difference between premeditated murder (“with malice aforethought”!) and manslaughter. Yet you’ve acknowledged you see the need. And how about conspiracy to commit murder, where it can be shown that the perpetrator thought ahead of time about how to commit the deed? Seems like that might be harder to prove in some cases than a hate crime, where a person is targeted not as an individual but as a member of a specific class.
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